The video is infamous: in March an Israeli sergeant shot and killed a Palestinian who had already been lying for several minutes in the street, wounded and neutralized, after being shot while stabbing and wounding another soldier. Now, Abdul Fattah Sharif’s death is in its long second phase — the sergeant’s military trial. And though months have gone by, all of Israel remains consumed by it. But the father of the would-be stabber claims not to even be aware that the trial is underway.

Jerusalem Day, first celebrated the year after the conquest of the Old City by Israeli paratroopers during the 1967 Six Day War, was established as an official state holiday by law in 1998. But in recent years, the day has become a flashpoint of verbal and physical violence between Jews and Arabs struggling over the most cherished sites of their respective religions.